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I was disturbed to read this comment on the current state of the U.S. economy in Governor of the Bank of Canada, Mark Carney's speech last week.

“The natural rate of (U.S.) unemployment may be increasing sharply. The scale of industry restructuring means that some unemployed workers do not have the skills suitable for the expanding sectors. Other job seekers are tied to their local area, due to an inability to sell their homes in distressed markets, hampering the mobility that has been a hallmark of the American labour market. The current cycle is also self-reinforcing. As long-term unemployment becomes more entrenched, workers’ skills deteriorate and their reintegration into the labour force becomes more difficult.”... read full story / add a comment

Just how bad is the state of Swaziland’s economy?
It’s a ‘catastrophe’ if you believe Roman Grynberg, senior research fellow at the non-governmental Botswana Institute for Development Policy Analysis, who said this week that changes made in the past to the way Southern Africa Customs Union (SACU) revenues were distributed, added to further changes being discussed for the future, would have ‘absolutely catastrophic’ consequences for countries such as Swaziland and would be ‘serious for political stability in the whole Southern African region’. ... read full story / add a comment

At least six people have been shot dead in Mozambique's capital during clashes between police and demonstrators protesting against rising food and fuel prices.
Police opened fire on protesters throwing stones and setting fire to tyres and barriers, but it was not immediately clear whether their bullets were responsible for the deaths.
According to the AFP news agency, one boy was shot in the head and left dead in the street, while a police spokesman told Reuters two children were killed in the violence.
Red Cross rescue teams in the impoverished southern African country said demonstrators were killed during separate protests in Maputo on Wednesday.
"We have had 42 cases at the hospital. Twenty-three were wounded by gunshots. Two are being operated on at the moment. Nineteen have wounds from physical attacks. One died," Antonio Assis da Costa, director of emergency services at the Red Cross, told AFP. ... read full story / add a comment

Greg Albo, Sam Gindin, and Leo Panitch all teach political economy at York University in Toronto and are the authors of In and Out of Crisis: The Global Financial Meltdown and Left Alternatives, published by PM Press. Panitch and Albo are co-editors of the Socialist Register, while Gindin for many years was research director of the Canadian Auto Workers Union.

Sasha Lilley is the book's editor and the author of the forthcoming Capital and Its Discontents: Conversations with Radical Thinkers in a Time of Tumult, out this autumn from PM Press. ... read full story / add a comment

I first knew Mozambique through close contact in Dar es Salaam with FRELIMO in the early and difficult years – the 1960s and the first-half of 1970s – of its armed liberation struggle. Then Mozambique was seeking both to unite itself and to find political and military purchase against an intransigent and arrogant Portuguese colonialism. And FRELIMO – under the leadership of, first, Eduardo Mondlane (to be assassinated by the Portuguese) and, after him, of Samora Machel – did indeed manage, by 1975, to lead the country to victory. Along the way, FRELIMO succeeded in liberating zones in Mozambique adjacent to its rear bases in Tanzania and Zambia where it built a new social infrastructure of agricultural coops, schools and health services. Equally important, it forged an impressive corps of politically conscious and disciplined leadership cadres (see Cabaço, 2001 and 2009). ... read full story / add a comment